L'Eau d'Issey Issey Miyake 1992 Eau de Toilette

L'Eau d'Issey does not mean L'Eau d'Issey to me.
L'Eau d'Issey means Verena to me.
Verena is a woman born around 1960.
Verena means something like "the strong" in German - and no other name could ever suit this woman better.
She has worn this fragrance since I have known her, probably even before I was born and very likely still today.
It is "her" scent and, alongside Davidoff's Cool Water back then, the only one she wears and above all the one she loves the most.

About Verena from my memory.
It's the year 2004.
Verena has four children. Or five? Six? In any case, many. Two cats, rabbits, and guinea pigs are also part of her family.
Who is supposed to keep track of that? The neighbors certainly don't. To them, Verena is antisocial, "with so many children that can't even all fit in the car." "What kind of woman is that? How many men has she had? Just look at the kids, they don't look like they all belong to one man. More like each from a different one." "Poor divorced woman. And then she's so arrogant, as if she were Mrs. Consul herself. What does SHE think she's so special about?"
Well. Verena, then just shy of forty, has many children and these children, in turn, many pets.
Verena is a single mother, her youngest child is in playgroup age. Nevertheless, she works, every day from four in the morning until ten or eleven in the morning. Only then does she have time to pick up the youngest from daycare, tidy up the house, and cook before the first child comes home from school or kindergarten.
The children can manage breakfast without her in the morning. But cooking for a half football team is something she can't expect from her eldest at ten years old. Maybe in a few years.
Verena does not have a housekeeper.
She does not have a car that fits all her children.
Verena has a large house. She built this house herself, with her husband, who is no longer around. He died during the construction. That’s why part of the house is still unfinished.
But that doesn't matter to Verena. The children's rooms are nice, and she herself sleeps in the living room, on the couch on a concrete floor.
What hardly anyone knows: Verena is a trained lawyer. She graduated magna cum laude. Why does she work in a factory then? Because no other job would allow her to balance work and children, and of course, because she moved to the countryside for her great love, and there isn't much choice here.
Acquaintances admire Verena for her strength, her endurance. Or they pity her because she has no man.
Verena has no friends.
She is pragmatic and probably wouldn't even have time to maintain friendships.
Anyone who thinks that Verena is an unattractive woman who looks and dresses as pragmatically as she lives is very mistaken.

As already mentioned, she is almost forty but looks like thirty. At most. "Stress preserves," she laughs off when someone mentions her age.
When she smiles, she can look intense and fierce, thanks to her green eyes and her strong facial features: high cheekbones and a square chin, at the level of which her dark red-tinted curls end (Verena's natural hair color is reddish-brown).
Verena is tall, estimated at 1.77 meters, which makes her very tall and a bit intimidating to me at that time. She has legs that Heidi Klum would surely envy. She wears a sporty size 36 and goes to the nearest big city every year to find stylish ankle boots in her size (42, I believe I know). (I knew this woman for a long time and have never seen her in flat shoes.)
Most of the time, I see her in her favorite jeans, a faded, stylish skinny jean from Lee, with paint stains and tears. "Because that's how it's worn now, I just added some more tears to the one where the pants were damaged," she explains to me. "A few years ago, this was my work pants, now people pay a lot of money to get something like this new." Wow. When the jeans are airing out, Verena wears a shiny black leather thing, maybe leggings? With it, a long, loose white blouse. She could probably wear anything with her figure, and if she didn't live in a small town, she would have become a model or at least a trendsetter.
She usually finds trends ridiculous and for people who don't know what to wear or do on their own; her wardrobe has space for three pairs of pants, a coat, a knitted dress, and a few tops, including a fur vest that she sometimes wears over the white blouse when she feels like making people stare and talk, because they do that anyway.
Everything about Verena is a statement.
So is her perfume. She only has two, one that she loves and one that she wears until she gets back the one she loves.
And she loves none as much as L'Eau d'Issey. That's why every birthday or Christmas, her children (sometimes with the 25-year-old lover) chip in and send someone to the bigger city to get this stuff.
Spending almost 100€ on a perfume goes against Verena's principles. The money is better invested in her children.
Although she secretly knows that she will receive her treasure from her treasures, she acts surprised every time, but is honestly overwhelmed.
Just like I am by L'Eau d'Issey.
I smell Verena aka L'Eau d'Issey, and she is still several meters away (and that's an understatement for a change), and I still have it in my nose long after she has already left.
No scent has etched itself into my memory like Verena. It fills the room with its presence; it is an overstatement.
For me, this scent is an impossibility; I cannot smell it, which is probably due to the clove-violet-rose mixture (all notes that I, perhaps also due to the memory, do not like very much).
But if someone can wear it, then it is a woman like Verena.
A woman who is incredibly strong, independent, smart, a woman with edges and corners. I do not smell warmth, nothing heartfelt, rather a punch in the gut for anyone who stands in her way.
Verena is not for cotton candy ladies, not for elfin "La vie est belle" representatives, not for anyone who likes to be everybody's darling.

When I meet Verena (the woman) today, I am no longer afraid of her. She has become a bit shorter and rounder over the years.
But HER scent has lost none of the punch it had for me back then.